


a little lost, a little found

by inlovewithnight



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Concussions, Feelings, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 19:48:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6390844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four visits from the Panthers Old Dudes Club to Willie Mitchell while he tries to decide if he's going to retire on medical advice or come back to the team.</p>
<p>And one talk with Aaron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a little lost, a little found

**Author's Note:**

> If you follow the Panthers, this has been A Thing the last week or so, whether Mitchell will come back against advice from the injured reserve he's been on since a concussion in January.
> 
> Today he talked to the team at practice and I took the feelings I was having and put them into a story.
> 
> _.@FlaPanthers D Willie Mitchell explained situation w/ docs to team. Says he's there for them, working to return._ [source](https://twitter.com/GeorgeRichards/status/714496765978914816)

Jussi and Soupy come over on a Tuesday when the team gets back from a roadie. Not that it really matters what day it is; Willie is house-bound, and bored, and every day is the same routine of playing with the dog, tagging along after Megan, going to a meeting or a medical appointment and maybe doing some PT if he’s lucky, and taking way too many naps.

He’s been on IR for a month. He’s done this before, he’s familiar with it, but that doesn’t make it suck any less.

The guys bring lunch and team gossip, and Willie inhales both. Meg took one look at them and went out for the afternoon, leaving them to their hockey-player stuff. (Willie can’t even pretend it’s just leaving them to _guy stuff_ ; it’s way more weird and specific than that. He tries to own his shit, here.)

Once they’ve caught him up on the latest in dumb things said and done during games he didn’t attend, they sit in silence for a while, picking at the remains of lunch. Willie’s just about to ask to what he really owes the pleasure of their company when Jussi starts talking.

It’s… weird, kind of a rambling monologue about Finland that doesn’t seem to have a point. He talks about relatives and friends back there, holidays and events he’s missed, things he remembers from his childhood and would love to see again. Soupy sits there nodding at appropriate times, and Willie does his best to do the same, but he can’t figure out why the fuck it’s happening or what he’s supposed to say. 

When Jussi wraps up, they both smile at him, warm and kind of hopeful. 

“Thanks for coming by,” Willie says finally, unable to come up with anything else. “Good to see you.”

They both hug him before they go, and he has to have a mid-afternoon beer before Megan gets back because _what the fuck was that_.

**

It’s six hours later when he starts out of his half-doze in bed and realizes that Jussi was doing some kind of fucking improv performance on the topic of going home. And Soupy was just, like… enabling it. Playing the gong in the background.

Fuck those guys.

**

Two weeks later Jagr wanders into the weight room while Willie is doing his PT. “Mitchie, hello,” he says, claiming a bench and settling in. “I have been thinking of you.”

“That’s sweet, Jags.” Willie finishes his set of leg curls. “You here to work out or to chat?”

“Just to chat.” He picks up a dumbbell and studies it disdainfully. “Did you leave this here?”

Willie shakes his head and wipes his face down. “One of the kids from Portland.”

“Not big enough.” 

“Yeah, well. I didn’t feel right telling him what to do.”

“You’re the captain. It’s your job.”

Willie shrugs irritably and tosses his towel on the floor. “I’m not really the captain right now and you know it, man. You’re more of one than I am.”

“No, no.” Jags shakes his head and Willie waits for a dose of weird Czech proverbs or Orthodox theology or… something. Instead he gets, “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. It’s boring.”

Willie glares at him, which Jags calmly ignores, because Jags is an asshole. “I’m real sorry I’m boring you.”

“It’s forgiven.” Jags waves his hand and stands up again, walking a slow circle around the room and frowning at other dumbbells left here and there. “Self-pity is nothing. Waste of time. There is only the work to come back, or deciding to be done and going home to have children.”

Willie’s head snaps up so fast his neck hurts. “Who said anything about being done?” Nobody better have said a fucking thing about it, that’s between him and the doctors. 

In theory. If team doctors can be trusted to keep things confidential. Great, now he has something else to worry about.

Jags gives him one of those sideways looks that manages to convey the years between now and when he started, and the distance between here and Kladno, through nothing at all. But all he says is, “Don’t waste time, my friend.”

Then he leaves in a cloud of drama, as usual, and Willie’s left alone with the leg machine, the ache in his neck, and way too many thoughts.

**

He asks Meg to rub his neck that night. Letting her get her hands that close to his throat before he brings up brain-trauma recovery probably isn’t his best plan ever, but maybe it’s like being the beta wolf, showing his throat to the alpha preemptively and showing he knows his place.

Maybe he’s overthinking this.

“If I go back to the team, are you going to go back to Minnesota?” he asks, closing his eyes as she presses her thumbs in.

She goes still for a moment, then her hands drop and she rests her forehead against his shoulders.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” she says, finally, but there’s a quiver in her voice, and… well. Yeah. He knows.

**

Thornton takes him out for lunch, a week or so later. Willie was waiting for it without trying to be too obvious about the fact that he’s figured out the whole thing by now. His fellow veterans, the old guys in this team full of puppies, guppies, and larvae, are trying to feel out where he stands so they can break it to the others gently.

He can respect that. It’s incredibly annoying and he wants to punch them all, but he also respects it. It’s what he would do in their place, probably. What he would’ve done on other teams if a situation had called for it.

Probably. Maybe he would have run and hidden from the whole concept. He kind of wants to run and hide now.

“How is it?” Thorty asks after they finish shooting the shit and have been eating in silence for a few minutes.

“How is what?”

Thorty shrugs. “The brain. The body. You know. Everything.”

He wants to snap at him, like he did with Jags, but Thorty is not a Czech Yoda, he’s a bruiser from Ontario who put up with the entire ongoing circus show that is the Bruins for a really long time. If Willie snaps at him, Thorty might break his jaw.

Willie rubs his thumb against the rim of his glass and shrugs. “Shitty, I guess. You know how it is.”

“The usual shitty? Or too much, this time?” Willie knows that if he looks up, he’s going to see that thoughtful, penetrating stare that Thorty’s way too good at and not enough people give him credit for. He doesn’t know if he can face that, so he keeps staring at his drink instead.

“I don’t know,” he says finally. “I don’t know and the doctors can’t tell me.”

“Yeah. What good are they, then, eh?”

Willie huffs a painful laugh. “That’s for sure.” He pushes his plate away and glances around for the waitress. “You signed the extension. You were gonna retire this year, but you signed on.”

“Yeah.” Thorty shrugs a little, still settled back in his chair and watching with eyes that know too fucking much. “I figure, better not leave the kids alone with Jags, you know? Who knows what he’ll teach ‘em?”

“Midnight skates with weight vests, among other things.” The waitress appears and Willie signals for the check. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Shawn.”

“Well, whatever it is, if anybody gives you any shit…” Thorty waves his credit card in Willie’s face before Willie even manages to go for his wallet. “You send ‘em to me.”

“You’re not gonna beat up the Miami sports press, man.”

“Please. I wouldn’t have to, this isn’t Boston.” He hands his card off to the waitress with a smile. “All I’d have to do is look at these guys and they’d fold.”

Willie can’t really argue with that.

**

He’s up way too late that night, staring at first the bedroom ceiling and then the living room wall, trying not to wake Meg up with his tension.

Three AM doesn’t actually hold any answers. Not surprising, but still a pain in the ass.

**

After the press gets hold of it, Bobby comes over.

Willie is sitting on the deck, silently seething about the whole… thing. Fucking reporters and their fucking Twitters. Fucking front office deciding to press the issue by letting things go public. Fuck them all.

_It’s up to Willie. The doctors are concerned about his long-term health, but it’s his decision._ Thanks, assholes. It always helps a decision when a bunch of people are nagging you about it.

Bobby flops down in the chair next to him before Willie even registers he’s there. “What a bunch of cockheads,” he says, like this is the middle of a conversation they’re just picking up.

“I figured you’d be here eventually.” Willie looks down at Lu’s ugly bare toes on his deck. “The other old guys soften me up and you come in for the kill?”

“Eh. I’m not a killer.” Bobby squints up at the sky. “I’m more of a warrior-poet, I think.”

“Please don’t recite poetry. I’m on the ledge as it is.”

“Aw, buddy. It’s not that bad.”

Willie bites at the edge of his thumbnail. Fucking Bobby, making everything sound like a joke. On the other hand, maybe it’s just what he needs right now, because despite himself he’s started talking.

“You were there,” he says. “In Vancouver. The bad one.”

“Yeah, I was.” And that _doesn’t_ sound like a joke, to be fair. That sounds like a guy who saw a friend go down hard and be slow getting up, both literally and for months and months to follow. Until he got traded because the team that he played for when he fell didn’t think he could come back at all.

“You remember how it was.”

“Yeah, I do.” Bobby rubs his jaw. “You weren’t yourself, man. You were like… like an alien wearing Willie Mitchell as a suit. It was fucked-up and scary and weird.”

“I know.” He hates remembering that time. Hates that he has to. “I was there.”

“You don’t need me to tell you that, though. Meg was also there, and I bet she’s told you plenty. Right?”

“We’ve talked about it like… fifty million times.” Willie shakes his head. “She always ends up saying it’s my decision. Just like the office does. What am I supposed to do with that, you know?”

“Make a decision, I think. I mean, I’m no expert.”

Fucking Bobby. “ _How_?” His voice breaks, and fuck that, too. “How am I supposed to decide?”

“I don’t know.” Bobby’s voice gets a little more gentle. “But whatever you decide, nobody’s gonna be mad at you, okay?” Willie shakes his head, and Bobby sighs. “Okay, well. Adult people with reasonable expectations aren’t gonna be mad at you.”

“Right.”

“And if you talk to the kid, he’ll get it. He’s not an idiot.” Bobby pauses, then makes a face. “Well. He’s an idiot. But he’s got a good heart, and he’ll get it.”

Willie exhales through clenched teeth. “I hate it when you’re right, you know that?”

“Yes. Everyone hates it when I’m right, which is weird, because I’m _always_ right.”

“I didn’t want it to go like this.”

“None of us do, man. But we don’t get to choose.” Bobby stands up and stretches slowly, his joints creaking and popping in the horrifying way old goalies’ bodies do. “You didn’t think it was all good money and sweet pussy, did you?”

Willie has to laugh, for the first time all day. That’s probably why Bobby came in the first place.

**

Megan comes downstairs that night and joins him in the living room, curling up at his side and resting her head on his shoulder.

“I think I’ve gotta talk to the boys,” he says, finding her hand and lacing their fingers together.

She nods, just a little. “All of them?”

“Yeah. At practice, I guess. Clear the air.” He squeezes her hand and she squeezes back, passing the pressure back and forth between their fingers. “And then one-on-one with Aaron.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” She kisses his shoulder and sighs. “Bring him home for dinner, after.”

“I’ll try.” He feels like he’s been saying that a lot, lately. Like all he does is _try_ without getting anywhere. 

But there’s still time. There is.

**

He gives his talk at practice, careful to keep his voice at a level the boys can hear and the spectators can’t. He has a lot he wants to say, and he doesn’t quite manage all of it, but he means every word. He looks around the circle, meets the team’s eyes one by one, and something unknots in his chest. They understand. If he can come back, they’ll welcome him; if he can’t, they know it’s not because he doesn’t want to. 

He didn’t realize how much he needs to know they know that.

There’s still Aaron, who looks at him with the same understanding as the others, but in his case it isn’t quite enough. He’s a teammate but he isn’t _just_ a teammate, can’t be after they spent that season in each other’s pockets, after Willie poured out all those words, memories, stories, advice, and Aaron soaked them up like a thirsty sponge. There’s something else, something more, and Willie has to honor that. He can’t live with himself if he doesn’t.

First he has to catch the kid, though, and damn if Aaron isn’t doing his best to escape the building without talking to him.

Aaron’s halfway to his truck when Willie makes it into the parking lot. “Eks,” he calls, projecting his voice like they’re on the ice with a crowd in the background. “Hey.”

Aaron stops, ducks his head, doesn’t turn. “You don’t have to… I mean, I get it. I understand.”

Willie closes the distance between them slowly, giving the kid room to move if he wants to, but Aaron stays still. “Do you? Are you sure?”

“It’s your health. Your brain. The team and the playoffs aren’t as important as that.” Aaron has his interview voice on, the careful cadence to his words that says he wrote his talking points out and memorized them. It took Willie the first month Aaron lived with him and Megan to get him to stop talking in that voice.

“It’s not about what’s more important. It’s not… I’m not putting things in an order like that.” Willie takes a deep breath and looks around the lot, trying to pull his thoughts together. “I want to play. I want to go out on the ice with you. I want to be part of your first playoffs, Aaron. I want that more than anything.”

Aaron sniffs, still staring at the asphalt. “You’re part of it. Whether you’re playing or not, I mean. You taught me so much. All of us. You’re part of getting us here.”

“I know that. I also know it’s not the same.” Willie reaches out carefully to touch Aaron’s shoulder, holding back until he’s sure Aaron won’t pull away. “I know if I retire, you’ll all hold on to it. You’ll say let’s win this one for Mitchie. It’ll be a good thing in the room. It’ll make a good story. And it’ll drive me absolutely fucking crazy, because I’ll want to be there.” He has to stop, he can’t breathe if he doesn’t stop and focus on it, and Aaron leans into his touch like he needs the pause, too. 

“If I go, it’s not because I’m leaving the team,” Willie says when he can talk again. “And it’s not because I’m leaving you. It’s… it’ll be so I can keep this. So I can give a shitty speech at your wedding, and so I can heckle you when you win your first Norris, and come hang out at alumni games down here and give you and Barky a hard time. So I don’t forget any of that. Okay? It’s not… it’s not leaving you.”

Aaron huffs a painful breath, his hand fumbling in the air until it finds Willie’s wrist and holds on tight. “I know. But… I just… thanks, I needed…”

“You needed to hear it?” Willie asks, and Aaron nods, finally giving up and slumping against Willie’s chest. Willie wraps his arms around him, rocking them back and forth a little, taking shaky gulps of wet south Florida air. “I think I needed to say it, too.”

“That all sounded kinda like you decided,” Aaron says after a moment, and Willie shakes his head.

“I actually haven’t? Which means all of this is gonna be an awkward and weird thing if I make it back.”

“It’s not weird. It’s good.” Aaron rubs his eyes against Willie’s shoulder and Willie doesn’t even smack him for it. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Willie squeezes gently and lets go. “Meg wants you to come over for dinner.”

“Okay.” Aaron takes another breath and steps back. “I’d like that.”

The moment has to break or they’re both going to choke, Willie knows, so he breaks it, pushing away the little pang of possibility and regret. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t argue about you winning your _first_ Norris. Cocky little shit.”

Aaron laughs a little and rolls his eyes. They’re still wet, but Willie pretends he doesn’t notice. “What can I say, I learned from the best.”


End file.
